3 Responses to “Religious right seeks judiciary that dissolves church-state separation”

1. Lenny Says:
   May 1st, 2005 at 9:10 pm

   Your revised history propaganda is pure bull. Here are the facts:

   Here was buried Thomas Jefferson,
   author of the Declaration of American Independence,
   of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom,
   and father of the University of Virginia.
   Thomas Jefferson
   (Monticello, Virginia)
   {self-written}

   Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom
   Draft for a Bill to Establish Religious Freedom in Virginia (1779).
   by Thomas Jefferson
   S e c t i o n I.

   Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness; and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporary rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed theseare criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude hispowers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is adangerous falacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make hisopinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.
   S e c t i o n II.
   We the General Assembly of Virginia do enact that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
   S e c t i o n III.
   And though we well know that this Assembly, elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies, constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.

2. Bob Says:
   May 2nd, 2005 at 9:13 pm

   Lenny:
   I have been following this blog for a while now and Tim has consistently been right on quoting articles and posting his thoughts on them.
   What I don’t understand is why YOU follow this blog and post your bull. You obviously do not share Mr. Willoughby’s beliefs so why bother?
   Here is some more food for thought for you…
   Why would a multi-multi-millionaire Senator, who consistently votes to harm the
   hungry and the poor who so concerned Jesus, join forces with religious
   fundamentalists to stack this nation’s highest courts? Could it be because he
   and his wealthy Republican friends see huge financial benefits for themselves
   and their corporate patrons in a compliant court?

   At the “Justice Sunday” event hyped to national prominence by Bill Frist’s
   appearance, Chuck Colson told America that we should read the Federalist Papers
   to understand the intent and the mind of the Founders.

   Apparently Colson overlooked Federalist 47, published by James Madison on
   February 1, 1788. Titled, “The Particular Structure of the New Government and
   the Distribution of Power Among Its Different Parts,” Madison wrote about how
   important it was that the different branches of government serve as checks and
   balances on each other.

   “No political truth is of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the
   authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty,” wrote Madison of the concern
   about any one particular group dominating all branches of government. He added,
   “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the
   same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary,
   self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of
   tyranny.”

   A paragraph later, Madison quotes the Enlightenment thinker Montesquieu,
   inserting his own capital letters for emphasis:

   “‘When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or
   body,’ says he [Montesquieu], ‘there can be no liberty, because apprehensions
   may arise lest THE SAME monarch or senate should ENACT tyrannical laws to
   EXECUTE them in a tyrannical manner.’

   “Again: ‘Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and
   liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for THE JUDGE
   would then be THE LEGISLATOR. Were it joined to the executive power, THE JUDGE
   might behave with all the violence of AN OPPRESSOR.’”

   Or perhaps Colson could read Federalist 48, in which Madison quotes from Thomas
   Jefferson’s “Notes on the State of Virginia.”

   “All the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judiciary, result to
   the legislative body,” wrote Jefferson in this commentary quoted in Federalist
   48. “The concentrating of these in the same hands, is precisely the definition
   of despotic government.

   “It will be no alleviation, that these powers will be exercised by a plurality
   of hands, and not by a single one. One hundred and seventy-three despots would
   surely be as oppressive as one.”

   Jefferson added, “An ELECTIVE DESPOTISM was not the government we fought for;
   but one … in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced
   among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal
   limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.

   “For this reason, that Convention which passed the ordinance of government [the
   Constitution], laid its foundation on this basis, that the legislative,
   executive, and judiciary departments should be separate and distinct, so that
   no person should exercise the powers of more than one of them at the same
   time.'’

   Unless, of course, you are a Republican sponsored by massive corporate
   interests and willing to invade people’s bedrooms to score political points
   with religious extremists.

   The real power of the Republican Party is held by the corporatists - who Vice
   President Henry Wallace called “the American fascists” - whose loyalty is to
   hereditary wealth and corporate rule. (As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary
   noted, fascism is: “A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the
   extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership,
   together with belligerent nationalism.”)

   But this is such a small minority of Americans that Frist’s wealthy fascists
   had to bring along somebody else. They chose the religious fundamentalists for
   their unholy alliance.

   The fundamentalists want to replace the Constitution with their unique and
   particular interpretation of Christian scripture. Their main assertion is that
   this nation’s first laws were based on the Ten Commandments.

   The Founders disagree. As Jefferson famously wrote in his “Notes on Virginia”:

   “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious
   to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty
   gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

   In fact, Jefferson said, the idea that this nation was founded in Christianity,
   or that the Ten Commandments were a pattern for the Constitution, was a “fraud
   of the clergy.”

   “Christianity was not introduced [to England] till the seventh century,” wrote
   Jefferson in a February 10, 1814 letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, “the conversion
   of the first Christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year
   598, and that of the last about 686. Here, then, was a space of two hundred
   years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part
   of it. …

   “In truth, the alliance between Church and State in England has ever made their
   judges accomplices in the frauds of the clergy; and even bolder than they are.”

   But the bottom line for the corporatists is that if the religious conservatives
   - whipped into a frenzy by the thought that a woman may deign to control her
   own body - can change the courts to be more “conservative,” the corporatists
   can be sure that the “conservative” judges are both opposed to abortion, and
   also radically in favor of corporate interests and hereditary wealth.

   By helping out religious extremists, Frist’s corporate fascists will have much
   greater power to put into place judges who won’t overturn laws that deny the
   working class access to bankruptcy courts, the right to sue as a class when
   harmed, and will give multinational corporations the freedom to import,
   pollute, and profit at the expense of small businesses and communities. They’ll
   get judges who will outlaw birth control at the same time they outlaw unions
   and the minimum wage.

   It’s nothing new, really. Most recently, the Saudi royal family made a similar
   deal with their religious conservatives. The oil barons gave the
   fundamentalists the power to enforce their religious agenda, stacking the
   courts with fundamentalist judges, who in turn acted as enforcers to preserve
   the oil barons’ political and economic power.

   It worked for two generations, until the fundamentalists became so powerful
   that they decided the oil money should be theirs. The religious movement to
   take control of Saudi Arabia’s wealth was led by none other than Osama Bin
   Laden, who suggested that oil should sell for $200 a barrel, with the proceeds
   subsidizing evangelism around the world.

   The House of Saud was appalled and threw him out of the country, so he went
   back to Afghanistan and hooked up with the Taliban, men after his own heart,
   and decided to take on the power that he felt was propping up the royal family
   - America.

   Thus the ultimate irony, that a radical Catholic speaker at Sunday’s telecast
   would complain that his bunch was perceived by many as “America’s Taliban.” All
   while George W. Bush had moved over a billion taxpayer dollars to churches
   through his “faith based programs,” and fundamentalists avoided paying billions
   in taxes by promising to stay out of politics.

   As Jefferson said in a June 5, 1824 letter to Major John Cartwright, “What a
   conspiracy this, between Church and State!”

   Frauds of the clergy in the Middle East brought us 9/11, an explosion of Muslim
   conservativism, and a fourfold spike in terrorist incidents worldwide, while
   enriching the Saudi oil and Afghan heroin industries, and helping George W.
   Bush lead the world to the brink of war.

   The merger of corporatist Republicans and the new “frauds of the clergy” could
   bring this nation to an even more terrible crossroad, unless Americans of good
   conscience contact their members of the Senate to support Jefferson’s and
   Madison’s ideal of democracy.

   The number to reach any member of the Senate is 202-224-3121.

   Thom’s website is www.thomhartmann.com

   Lenny:
   I hope Bush and God has made your life in America better. You would be definately in the minority!
   Bob

3. Lenny Says:
   May 4th, 2005 at 6:55 am

   Bob,
   Tim, generally knowing my political leanings, invited me here “to have something to rant and rave over”. If you don’t like my comments, don’t bother to read them.

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The RM is a "Libertarian Democrat"

A Libertarian Democrat is vigorously pro-personal liberty, and believes government can play a constructive role in regulating our economy and providing a social safety net.